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Mtl vs. SJ - Saturday August 18th


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Interesting start to the game. Baffling penalty call and a red card shown to each team.

Steven Lenhart is quite the scumbag. Glad someone gave it back to him for once and the ref didn't fall for his usual garbage of baiting the opposing player then rolling around on the ground.

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Interesting, the US guys at COMCAST gave player of the match to Neagle. I'm still not convinced he belongs on an MLS roster. Nice take on his goal, but other than that I didn't really rate him.

Neagle is a depth midfielder for us and has his flaws but to say he doesn't belong on an MLS roster is really extreme and inaccurate. He was not worth what we gave up for him (the rights to Eddie Johnson though to be fair the main reason we lost that trade was not Neagle but Fucito not performing well). He is also a backup to Mapp and not nearly as good as Mapp is. However, when he plays he gives a solid effort and even if he is inconsistent he doesn't hurt us in his poor games (ie. he is not a defensive liability) and occasionally he has some really strong games like Saturday night. Any decent MLS team needs to have good depth players like Neagle and many do not. Last year he played a similar role as occasional starter, frequent sub for Seattle, the second best team in the league.

As far as being man of the match, a case could be made for Bernier, Felipe or Di Viao but Neagle was deserving of the honour as well. He played a key role in the first goal (was also in a good position and drew a defender who could have covered Di Viao instead), scored on a goal in which he was key in the buildup and then made a fantastic finish and had some other opportunities including one that forced the Seattle keeper into an excellent save. Plus there were many other non-highlight reel plays throughout the game. Sorry to be blunt but if you don't think he was deserving of man of the match you simply are not watching the match very closely or intuitively. And whatever faults he has (mostly it is inconsistency, he makes some very nice passes at times but is not consistent with them like Mapp is) the MLS is full of so many players who are far worse than he is. If you think he is not MLS quality you must not be watching many MLS games. Our former player Justin Braun does not belong in MLS, Neagle is a decent MLS backup midfielder who shows sparks of being capable of more but has yet to produce that form on a consistent basis.

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Interesting start to the game. Baffling penalty call and a red card shown to each team.

Steven Lenhart is quite the scumbag. Glad someone gave it back to him for once and the ref didn't fall for his usual garbage of baiting the opposing player then rolling around on the ground.

Yes Lenhart is a scumbag but the ref did fall for his baiting garbage since SJ got a penalty out of the play. Lenhart wacked Camara in the face as they were walking away from the play after the ball was kicked up the field and Camara hit him back and Lenhart makes a meal out of it (which is what a smarter and more disciplined Camara should have done after being hit because then possibly only Lenhart gets carded). Both were cardable offences though many refs might have decided for yellow instead of red. However, either way according to the rules even if it is totally undeserved and away from the play a foul was committed in the box and a penalty needs to be awarded. Given that a penalty would be awarding the instigator of the foul a penalty a good ref probably would not have carded either and just given them a stern talking to in order to avoid having to give an undeserved penalty but this is MLS and good refs are in short supply. There was poetic justice however in that the sending off of Lenhart hurt SJ more than Camara's sending off hurt us. We were able to shore up the backline by sending Brovsky from wing to CB and moving Arnaud back which worked surprisingly well. However, San Jose's attack is really dependent on having two strikers making room for each other. They have three good strikers but Alan Gordon was suspended for this game so Yallop had no one else to sub in and Wondolowski was left playing lone striker and was completely ineffective in this role.

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I can't believe the ref gave a penalty there... lucky for him it didn't affect the result. I know he only played 2 minutes plus stoppage on Saturday but what are early impressions on Ouimette? I was reading an article last night where Eullalfroy said:

"The first asset is he is very strong mentally combined with his will to succeed. What we don't know is his capacity to adjust to the level of game at the MLS level. He's played very well though in the MLS reserve games he's played in the past two months, the best player on the pitch."

"It's very difficult to say where he will end up - the Premiership, France or Germany I do not know. But I feel firmly he will be one of the best defenders in MLS in two or three years."

That is some pretty big hype being stacked on him there.

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